COLUMBUS, Ohio– The No. 3 Ohio State rowing team’s Varsity Eight ‘A’ boat finished a strong second in the Grand Final of the Jessop-Whittier Cup at the Crew Classic in San Diego, Calif. In the Buckeye’s final heat, the team clocked in at six minutes, 27.62 seconds, just 2.93 seconds behind defending national champion Washington.

“It was a great race,” Andy Tietelbaum, OSU head coach, said. “We showed good speed. We raced with a lot of heart and tenacity this weekend. We definitely didn’t hurt ourselves by coming out here. Washington is awesome and we let them get way ahead of us early and while we were faster than them at some points of the course, you can’t make mistakes like that against a great team and expect to get away with it.”

OSU’s Varsity Eight ‘B’ boat finished fourth in the finals for the Women’s JV competition. The team finished with a time of 6:55.01 behind California, Virginia and Washington, the winner with a time of 6:41.12.

All the Buckeye rowing squads now look forward to the Buckeye Invitational on Saturday at the Scioto River in Columbus, Ohio. The Buckeye Invitational involves Ohio State as well as Michigan, Michigan State, Texas and Clemson and is the sole competition in Columbus for the Buckeye rowing team in the 2002 Spring Season.

Tietelbaum is ready for the races this weekend.

“Next week is going to be some great racing,” Tietelbaum said. “Michigan State and Michigan are coming to town and that’s a huge rivalry. All three of those schools (OSU, MSU and UM) have been fighting real hard for the top of the Big Ten conference and its becoming more and more of a rivalry. Michigan has gotten the better of us for a couple of years, but we’ll see if we can maybe turn things around.”